Search for MH370 the Most Expensive in History

TODAY

10 April 2014

KUALA LUMPUR — As the intensive hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 enters its second month, the only certainty is that it would become the most expensive search and recovery effort in aviation history, with an international fleet of ships and planes scouring the Indian Ocean at a cost of millions of dollars a day.
For the most part, the dozens of countries that have contributed personnel, equipment and expertise to the search have borne the costs while declining to disclose them, with officials offering a united front in saying that it would be callous to talk about money while a commercial airliner and the 239 people aboard remained unaccounted for.

Still, many of the governments involved may soon face a tough decision about whether to keep bearing the extraordinary costs of the search, analysts said.

… “I don’t think a lot of these countries are big on heaping the bill on Malaysia,” said Mr Oh Ei Sun, a Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. “It’s just not the right thing to do.”

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